Thanks Coknuk for the greetings .. well one thing, just wondering why it seems that Windows Firewall is not common user wise.  May be due to the manual configuration that need to be done but there are softwares with simple wizard to configure it easily.

Also, as I have a Linksys router with a built-in firewall, Zone alarm or any other firewall rarerly show any attack from Internet as the router firewall is taking care of that.

The filtering machanism of Firewalls may cause drop in quality of data going across but also depending on the PC configs the resources will have to be capable to offer required memory to Firewall activity.

thanks

Windows Xp firewall is incoming only , and as usefull as a chocolate tea pot IMHO
and I have found zone alarm slows my computer ,

One other point to consider. Make sure you only use one firewall at a time. I have seen instances of internet security suites conflicting with the Windows firewall in XP. Friend of mine had that happen with McAfee, but I can't remember what version he was using.

i turned off default windows firewall and used comodo firewall pro but decided to uninstall it since i don't store very important data and no credit card or bank account numbers whatsoever in my pc.

this has given me a much improved speed.

before:



now: